The Sisters of Mary Immaculate of Nyeri, who have served over the last decade at Mater Dei Nursing Home in Elmer, are making plans to expand their presence here in South Jersey.
During the next year, the sisters’ congregation, which is based in Kenya, Africa, is expected to send more sisters to the United States to live here as they train for full time ministry in this country. There currently are about 400 sisters in the congregation worldwide.
First established in Nyeri, Kenya, in 1918 the Sisters of Mary Immaculate now serve throughout East Africa (Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania) as well as in the United States. The sisters currently staff and provide administration for ten primary and three secondary schools throughout East Africa and maintain three orphanages, two hospitals and five clinics in that region. The Sisters also provide vocational training through three skill-development centers and are hoping in the future to develop university-level educational opportunities for young men and women of Africa.
The sisters also are heavily involved in pastoral work, catechesis, prison ministry, evangelization and outreach.
They first established a presence in the United States a decade ago in South Jersey. Later they also began ministry in New York. The congregation now is hoping to strengthen their United States base of operations and to locate their American headquarters in the Diocese of Camden.
In anticipation of the expansion, the five sisters who are presently serving at Mater Dei Nursing home began the process last fall of relocating from smaller facilities in Elmer to a six-bedroom home with a chapel in Pittsgrove, with ample space to meet their present needs, as well as future expansion.
The move was made possible when the diocese purchased the home last July from a Catholic family who, as a charitable gesture, offered the 11-acre farmland property to the diocese for $800,000, a fraction of its original $1.5 million asking price.In purchasing the property, the diocese hoped to accommodate the growing needs of the sisters, while also securing the property for future use, possibly as a retreat center.
“Given the price of the property relative to its value, given needs of the sisters and the far greater cost of building a convent or refurbishing another facility elsewhere, and given the future possibility of establishing a retreat center in a central area of the diocese that is presently underserved, we were fortunate to obtain this property to serve Catholics in this area of the diocese,” said Andrew Walton, spokesman for the diocese.
The Diocese of Camden has retreat centers in Blackwood and Vineland and the Marianist Fathers run a family retreat center in Cape May Point.
“Given the facilities on the property and its setting, and the requirements that exist for retreat accommodations, including outdoor space, it is well-suited for a small retreat center,” Walton said.
Walton also said the purchase of the property make sense at this time given the efforts underway in the diocese to strengthen parishes and advance key pastoral priorities that parishioners said were most important at Speak Up sessions in 2005 and 2006.
“Parishes are merging in order to address the challenges of a decline in the number of priests available for ministry, shifts in population and changing demographics, and the need to strengthen parishes in order to advance pastoral priorities, such as youth ministry, compassionate outreach, and lifelong faith formation. The purchase of this property will accomodate the growth of a religious order dedicated to serving the people of South Jersey, especially the elderly and infirm.”
“Additionally,” Walton said, “it serves the purpose of advancing the pastoral priority of lifelong faith formation by providing Catholics of all age groups — men, women, youth, married couples, singles,clergy, religious — with opportunities to grow more deeply in their faith through daytime, evening or weekend retreat experiences, conferences and workshops is fully consistent with the parish planning process underway here.”
“We are thankful to the sisters for their generous and dedicated service. We are fortunate that they are here and are seeking to expand. We also look forward to the opportunity to serve the faith formation needs of area Catholics through retreat experiences,” said Walton.
For the sisters, they welcomed the move to Pittsgrove. “Our ministry doesn’t depend on where we live, which changes often with our missionary work, but on a spirit of detachment and of self-sacrifice that allows us to give ourselves completely to our mission and service to the people, said Sister Bernadette Gachiri, SMI, religious superior of the sisters in the diocese. “Our new location, however, will provide us with the opportunity to meet not just our present needs, but the growth that we anticipate in the coming months. We are grateful to the diocese and the people here for their hospitality and support.”
She said that the expansion of the order will allow the sisters to meet a range of additional needs. “Wherever we go, we get requests to help in parish ministry, vocational work, and other areas. With only five sisters, we are limited in what we can do.So, an expanded presence of the sisters in the diocese will give us the resources to reach out to serve more people and to meet the great needs that now exist,” she said.